What is the Iching?

Many people wonder: "What is the Iching?", we say that it is a book of Chinese origin that can be considered to be an oracle, whose first texts he believes they were written from 2.400 B.C. and it is part of Five Classic confucianists.

The term I-Ching means “Book of the Mutations” and his text was completed along the dynasty Chou and later the same text was increased by commentators originated from the school of Confucio. One believes that the Iching describes the present situation of that person who consults it and predicts the way in which it is necessary to solve the future in case a correct position is adopted. Basically the I-ching talks each other of a divination book and in turn it constitutes a book with moral content, and bearing in mind his structure and simbología, can consider like a cosmological and philosophical book, everything depends on the way and the purposes with which it is used.

The philosophy with which one handles the Iching supposes a universe that is governed by the beginning of the change and the dialectical relation between the opposite ones. It is important to bear in mind that the book does not present any situation in which there is not included the beginning opposite to the rector of the sign who will be in charge of taking the new state; it is important that it is born in mind that the changes will be realized in a cyclical way. To answer better the question: "What is the Iching?" we will speak a little about his cosmogonic aspect, the I-ching describes to the universe like producer of a creative energy originated from the sky, any time the Earth is receiving and fecundadora of the above mentioned energy; in certain way it is possible to be said that the Iching takes into consideration the change as the only existing reality in the Being.

In Occident, the same one usually identifies with everything those that there keeps close the matter (the material beginning) and the forms (The immaterial beginning), giving him an important virtue to the form. For this motive, for the Iching, the matter represents simply a passing declaration corresponding to a deeper beginning. To have the possibility of experiencing the Iching, helps us to comprise the way in which the changes are generated in us and in the circumstances that we are. And also we have the chance of discovering the contradictions that hide under the appearances, in addition to going so far as to understand all those changes for which we happen along our life, precisely this is one of the most important factors that they characterize to the book of the I-Ching.

History of the I-Ching

When they ask us: "What is the iching?" we must send ourselves to his history which dates of more than 5.000 years and says that the beginning of his use was practically parallel to that of the oracle of Delphi. The use of the I-ching turned into a very common practice in the court and in the illustrated class; there exist images assigned to the result of the consultations from the times of the emperor Fu-Hi. Anyhow it is important that we bear in mind that at present the versions of the book are 4: on the one hand is the Fu-Hi text. Also the texts belonging to king Wen and his son duke of Zhou and the texts of Confucio and his disciples to whom wizards' different contacts added him that in the course of time, they were discarded by students of the topic. The Book of the Iching came to Europe in the XIXth century with several attempts of translation, but his reception was not the ideal due to the magic character that was attributed to him.

On the other hand the I-ching is surrounded with legends that were accumulating along the history, but the only excellent information is that of the XIth century B.C. where king Wen developed a system that was based on an idea of 64 hexagramas (which is translated like “Lizard“) that symbolizes the speed and facility of the changes. Once king Wen died, was his son who kept on developing the above mentioned system, and also it introduced the concept of the relation between the opposite ones.

But it was not until the VIIIth century B.C. where there arises Chou I (Cambio de Chou) who treats 64 as a book composed for hexagramas. In the VIth century B.C. there arose two of the main currents of the thought with which one handles the Chinese culture that they were represented by Confucion and Lao Tse. Later and during the IIIrd and IInd centuries B.C. many members of the schools of Confucio began to write certain texts that are more known like “Ten Wings” which possess contributions on the interpretation that must give him to the hexagramas and to the images with his simbología corresponding to the concept of the change. Once Chuo I joined with the texts that form Ten Wings there arose the Iching as it we know at present.